Charles de Lint - Someplace To Be Flying

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ALSO BY CHARLES DE LINT FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES

Dreams Underfoot

The Fair at Emain Macha

Into the Green

The Ivory and the Horn

Jack of Kinrowan

The Little Country

Memory and Dream

Moonheart

Spiritwalk

Svaha

Trader

Yarrow

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in

this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYING

or portions thereof, in any form.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

Tor Books on the World Wide Web:

http://www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

Design by Basha Durand

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

de Lint, Charles

Someplace to be flying / Charles de Lint.-1st cd.

p. cm.

"A Tom Doherty Associates book."

ISBN 0-312-85849-3 (acid-free paper)

I. Title.

PR9199.3.D357S6 1998 97-37433

813'.54-dc21 CIP

First Edition: February 1998

Printed in the United States of America

0987654321

Grateful acknowledgments are made to:

Kiya Heartwood for the use of lines from her song "Wyoming Wind" from the album Singing with the

Outlaw Hill Publishing. Lyrics reprinted by permission. For more information about Heartwood, Wishing

Chair, or Terrakin Records, call 1-800-ROADDOG, or email ter-rakin@aol.com.

Ani DiFranco for the use of lines from "If He Tries Anything" from her album out of range.

information about DiFranco's music, contact Righteous Babe Records, P.O. Box 95, Ellicott Station,

Buffalo, NY 14205-0095.

Harris. Lyrics reprinted by permission.

John Gorka, Blues Palace Music/ASCAP. Lyrics reprinted by permission. For more information about

Gorka's music, write to Fleming-Tamulevich & Associates, 733-735 N. Main, Ann Arbor, MI 48104; call

(313) 995-9066; or email fta@pobox.com.

Chris Eckman for the use of lines from his songs "The Light Will Stay On" from the Walkabouts

Publishing GMPH. Lyrics reprinted by permission. For more information on Eckman's songs and the

Walkabouts, write to 4739 University Way, N.E., Suite 1100, Seattle, WA 98105.

For Kiya

yippee-ki-yi-yay

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Thanks for inspiration, guidance, and crow stories go out to MaryAnn, Terri, Rodger, Andrew and

Alice V., Kiya, Amanda, and Ginette.

And, as usual, let me mention that the city, characters, and events to be found in these pages are

fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

If any of you are on the Internet, come visit my homepage. The URL (address) is

http://www.cyberus.ca/~cdl.

charles de lint Ottawa, Summer 1997

CONTENTS

1 Poetry in a Tree

2 A Piece of Nowhere

3 The House on Stanton Street

4 In a Field of Grace

5 Tarnished Mirrors

6 The Lonesome Death of Nettie Bean

7 City of Crows

8 The Light Will Stay On

So I asked the raven as he passed by,

I said, "Tell me, raven, why'd you make the sky?"

"The moon and stars, I threw them high,

I needed someplace to be flying."

-Kiya Heartwood,

from "Wyoming Wind"

If men had wings and bore black feathers,

few of them would be clever enough to be

crows.

-Rev. Henry Ward Beecher (mid-1800s)

it's a long long road

it's a big big world

we are wise wise women

we are giggling girls

we both carry a smile

to show when we're pleased

both carry a switchblade

in our sleeves

-Ani DiFranco,

from "If He Tries Anything"

POETRY IN A TREE

Everything is held together with stories. That is all

that is holding us together, stories and compassion.

-barry lopez,

from an interview in poets and writers,

vol. 22, issue 2 (march/april 1994)

Newford, Late August, 1996

The streets were still wet but the storm clouds had moved on as

Hank drove south on Yoors waiting for a fare. Inhabited tenements

were on his right, the derelict blight of the Tombs on his left, Miles

Davis's muted trumpet snaking around Wayne Shorter's sax on the tape

deck. The old Chev four-door didn't look like much; painted a flat gray,

it blended into the shadows like the ghost car it was.

It wasn't the kind of cab you flagged down. There was no roof light

on top, no meter built into the dash, no license displayed, but if you

needed something moved and you had the number of the cell phone,

you could do business. Safe business. The windows were bulletproof

glass and under the body's flaking paint and dents, there was so much

steel it would take a tank to do it any serious damage. Fast business,

too. The rebuilt V-8 under the hood, purring as quiet as a contented cat

at the moment, could lunge to one hundred miles per hour in seconds.

The car didn't offer much in the way of comfort, but the kinds of fares

that used a gypsy cab weren't exactly hiring it for its comfort.

When he reached Grasso Street, Hank hung a left and cruised

through Chinatown, then past the strip of clubs on the other side of

Williamson. The clock on his dash read 3:00 A.M. The look-at-me

crowd was gone now with only a few stragglers still wandering the wet

streets. The lost and the lonely and the seriously screwed-up. Hank

smiled when he stopped at a red light and a muscle-bound guy crossed

in front of the cab wearing a T-shirt that read, "Nobody Knows I'm a

Lesbian." He tapped his horn and the guy gave him a Grasso Street

salute in response, middle finger extended, fingernails painted black.

When he realized Hank wasn't hassling him, he only shrugged and kept

on walking.

A few blocks farther, Hank pulled the cab over to the curb. He

keyed the speed-dial on the cell phone and had to wait through a

handful of rings before he got a connection.

"You never get tired of that crap, kid?" Moth asked.

Hank turned the tape deck down.

"All I've got left is that six o'clock pickup," he said by way of

response. The only thing Moth considered music had to have a serious

twang-add in yodeling and it was even better-so there was no point in

arguing with him. "Have you got anything to fill in the next couple of

hours?"

"A big nada."

Hank nodded. He hated slow nights, but he especially hated them

when he was trying to raise some cash.

"Okay," he said. "Guess I'll head over to the club and just wait for

Eddie outside."

"Yeah, well, keep your doors locked. I hear those guys that were

jacking cars downtown have moved up to Foxville the past couple of

nights."

"Eddie told me."

"Did he say anything about his people dealing with it?"

Hank watched as a drank stumbled over to the doorway of one of

the closed clubs and started to take a leak.

"Like he's going to tell me?" he said.

"You got a point. Hey, I hear that kid you like's doing a late set at

the Rhatigan."

Hank almost laughed. Under a spodight, Brandon Cole seemed

ageless, especially when he played. Hank put him in his mid-to-late

thirties, but he had the kind of build and features that could easily go

ten years in either direction. A tall, handsome black man, he seemed to

live only for his sax and his music. He was no kid, but to Moth

anybody under sixty was a kid.

"What time's it start?" he asked.

He could almost see Moth shrug. "What am I, a press secretary

now? All I blow is Dayson's got a couple of high rollers in town-jazz

freaks like you, kid-and he told me he's taking them by."

"Thanks," Hank said. "Maybe I'll check it out."

He cut the connection and started to work his way across town to

where the Rhatigan was nestled on the edge of the Combat Zone. The

after-hours bar where Eddie ran his all-night poker games was over in

Upper Foxville, but he figured he could take in an hour or so of Cole's

music and still make the pickup in plenty of time.

Except it didn't work out that way. He was coming down one of the

little dark back streets that ran off Grasso-no more than an alley, really-

when his headlights picked out a tall man in a dove-gray suit, beating

on some woman.

Hank knew the drill. The first few times he took out the spare car,

Moth had stopped him at the junkyard gate and stuck his head in the

window to reel it off: "Here's the way it plays, kid. You only stop for

money. You don't pick up strays. You never get involved." One, two,

three.

But some things you didn't walk away from. This time of night, in

this part of town, she was probably a hooker-having some altercation

with her pimp, maybe, or she hadn't been paying attention to her radar

and got caught up with a john turned ugly-but that still didn't make it

right.

He hit the brakes, the Chev skidding for a moment on the slick

pavement before he got it back under control. The baseball bat on the

seat beside him began to roll forward. A surge of adrenaline put him

into motion, quick, not even thinking. He grabbed the bat by its handle,

put the car in neutral, foot coming down on the parking brake and

locking it into place. Through the windshield he could see the man

backhand the woman, turn to face him. As the woman fell to the

pavement, Hank popped the door and stepped outside. The baseball bat

was a comfortable weight in his hand until the man reached under his

jacket.

Hank could almost hear Moth's voice in the back of his head. "You

get involved, you get hurt. Plain and simple. And let me tell you, kid.

There's no percentage in getting hurt."

It was a little late for advice now.

The man wasn't interested in discussion. He pulled a handgun out

from under that tailored dove-gray suit jacket and fired, all in one

smooth move. Hank saw the muzzle flash, then something smashed

him in the shoulder and spun him around, throwing him against the

door of the Chev. The baseball bat dropped out of numbed fingers and

went clattering across the pavement. He followed after it, sliding down

the side of the Chev and leaving a smear of blood on the cab's paint job.

Moth is going to be pissed about that, he thought.

Then the pain hit him and he blacked out for a moment. He floated

in some empty space where only the pain and sound existed. His own

rasping breath. The soft murmur of the cab's engine, idling. The faint

sound of Miles and Shorter, the last cut on the tape, just ending. The

muted scuff of leather-soled shoes on pavement, approaching. When he

got his eyes back open, the man was standing over him, looking down.

The man had a flat, dead gaze, eyes as gray as his suit. Hank had

seen their kind before. They were the eyes of the men who stood

against the wall in the back room of Eddie's bar, watching the action,

waiting for Eddie to give them a sign that somebody needed

straightening out. They were the eyes of men he'd picked up at the

airport and dropped off at some nondescript hotel after a stop at one of

the local gunrunners. They were the eyes he'd seen in a feral dog's face

one night when it had killed Emma's cat in the yard out behind her

apartment, the hard gaze holding his for a long moment before it

retreated with its kill.

The man lifted his gun again and now Hank could see it was an

automatic, as anonymous as the killer holding it. Behind the weapon,

the man's face remained expressionless. There was nothing there. No

anger, no pleasure, no regret.

Hank couldn't feel the pain in his shoulder anymore. His mind had

gone blank, except for one thing. His entire being seemed to hold its

breath and focus on the muzzle of the automatic, waiting for another

flash, more pain. But they didn't come.

The man turned away from him, cobra-quick, his weapon now

aimed at something on the roof of the cab. It hadn't registered until the

man moved, but now Hank realized he'd also heard what had distracted

the killer. An unexpected sound. A hollow bang on metal as though

someone had jumped onto the roof of the cab.

Jumped from where? His own gaze followed that of his attacker's.

One of the fire escapes, he supposed. He knew a momentary sense of

relief-someone else was playing Good Samaritan tonight-except there

was only a girl standing there on the roof of the cab. A kid. Skinny and

monochrome and not much to her: raggedy blue-black hair, dark

complexion, black clothes, and combat boots. There seemed to be a

cape fluttering up behind her like a sudden spread of black wings, there

one moment, gone the next, and then she really was just a kid, standing

there, her weight on one leg, a switchblade held casually in a dark

hand.

Hank wanted to cry a warning to her. Didn't she see the man had a

gun? Before he could open his mouth, the killer stiffened and an

expression finally crossed his features: surprise mixed with pain. His

gun went off again, loud as a thunderclap at this proximity, the bullet

kicking sparks from the fire escape before it went whining off into the

darkness. The man fell to his knees, collapsing forward in an ungainly

sprawl. Dead. And where he'd been standing . . . the girl. . . .

Hank blinked, thinking the girl had somehow transported herself

magically from the top of the cab to the pavement behind the killer. But

the first girl was still standing on the roof of the cab. She jumped to the

ground, landing lightly on the balls of her feet. Seeing them together,

he realized they were twins.

The second girl knelt down and cleaned her knife on the dead man's

pants, leaving a dark stain on the dove-gray material. Closing the blade,

she made it disappear up her sleeve and walked away to where the

woman Hank had been trying to rescue lay in the glare of the cab's

headlights.

"You can get up now," the first girl said, making her own

switchblade vanish.

Hank tried to rise but the movement brought a white-hot flare of

pain that almost made him black out again. The girl went down on one

knee beside him, her face close to his. She put two fingers to her lips

and licked them, then pressed them against his shoulder, her touch as

light as a whisper, and the pain went away. Just like that, as though

she'd flicked a switch.

Leaning back, she offered Hank her hand. Her skin was dry and

cool to the touch and she was strong. Effortlessly, she pulled him up

into a sitting position. Hank braced himself for a fresh flood of pain,

but it was still gone. He reached up to touch his shoulder. There was a

hole in his shirt, the fabric sticky and wet with blood. But there was no

wound. Unable to take his gaze from the girl, he explored with a finger,

found a pucker of skin where the bullet hole had closed, nothing more.

The girl grinned at him.

All he could do was look back at her, stumbling to frame a coherent

sentence. "What . . . how did you . . . ?"

"Spit's just as magic as blood," she said. "Didn't you ever know

that?"

He shook his head.

"You look so funny," she went on. "The way you're staring at me."

Before he could move, she leaned forward and kissed him, a small

tongue darting out to flick against his lips, then she jumped to her feet,

leaving behind a faint musky smell.

"You taste good," she said. "You don't have any real meanness in

you." She looked solemn now. "But you know all about meanness,

don't your"

Hank nodded. He got the feeling she was able to look right inside

him, sifting through the baggage of memories that made up his life as

though it were a hard-copy resume, everything laid out in point form,

easy to read. He grabbed hold of the cab's fender and used it to pull

himself to his feet. Remembering that first image of her he'd seen

through his pain, that impression of dark wings rising up behind her

shoulders, he thought she must be some kind of angel,

"Why . . . why'd you help me?" he asked.

"Why'd you try to help the woman?"

"Because I couldn't not try."

She grinned. "Us, too."

"But you . . . where did you come from?"

She shrugged and made a sweeping motion with her hand that

could have indicated the fire escape above his cab or the whole of the

night sky. "We were just passing by-same as you."

He heard a soft scuff of? boots on the pavement and then the other

girl was there, the two of them as alike as photographs printed from the

same exotic negative.

The first girl touched his forearm. "We've got to go."

"Are you . . . angels?" Hank asked.

The two looked at each other and giggled.

"Do we look like angels?" the second girl asked.

Not like any kind he'd ever seen in pictures, Hank wanted to say,

but he thought maybe they were. Maybe this is what angels really

looked like, only they were too scruffy for all those high-end Italian

and French artists, so they cleaned the image up in their paintings and

everybody else bought it.

"I don't know," he said. "I've never seen real angels before tonight."

"Isn't he cute?" the first girl said.

She gave Hank another quick kiss, on the cheek this time, then the

two of them sauntered off, hand in hand, like one of them hadn't just

healed a gunshot wound, like they weren't leaving a dead body behind.

Hank glanced down at the corpse, then looked back up the alley where

the girls had been walking.

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ALSOBYCHARLESDELINTFROMTOMDOHERTYASSOCIATESDreamsUnderfootTheFairatEmainMachaIntotheGreenTheIvoryandtheHornJackofKinrowanTheLittleCountryMemoryandDreamMoonheartSpiritwalkSvahaTraderYarrowATOMDOHERTYASSOCIATESBOOKNEWYORKThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisnovelareeitherfictit...

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